Another recent Saint who was a healer, this time, Brother André from Montreal, (now canonized as Saint André, on October 17, 2010).

The four aspects of healing.

We are looking for cures for diseases and not finding them in spite of costly research because we tackle symptoms rather than looking for the causes. Take cancer, for example. Our doctors and scientists try to find ways to prevent malignant cells from multiplying, by applying chemotherapy, radiation, surgery and transfusions. Spiritual healers zap energy into the body to shrink the tumors and slough away the decaying cells. Other therapies use visualization techniques to attack and kill malignant cells. These methods are often successful, but the root causes of the disease are scarcely ever found and examined. If they were, we would be able to eradicate this and every other life-threatening disease within a very short space of time. What is needed is not a one-sided approach treating the physical symptoms, but a four-sided onslaught on disease: find the root causes not only in the physical body, but also in the emotional, mental and spiritual dimensions. This means going deep into our philosophies and religions as well as applying the common-sense of science.

In the first place, we fail to use our common-sense because in the modern world we assault our body from every angle, over-exposing it to the sun’s rays, thus risking the formation of melanomas. We ingest and digest all kinds of chemical toxins in our food, mostly in the form of preservatives, coloring, hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, inorganic fertilizers and excessive salt, fat and refined flour and sugar. In this way we are gradually embalming our bodies as we live! When we die and are carted off to the funeral parlor, most of us won’t need formaldehyde. Our body is already sufficiently pickled and our flesh has long been more dead than alive. The Californian healer William Gray told us this half a century ago, but not much notice was taken of his wisdom. Many of our body’s cells are dying as a result of this daily onslaught of chemicals and add to this the fumes of pollution; carcinogens like the tar in tobacco smoke and the tar from our road surfaces.
Our healthy body cells cannot provide enough resistance to the decaying cells and so the latter form malignances and grow out of control. So the
first element of our campaign to eradicate disease is to stop exposing our physical body to all these toxins and stresses. The greening of our environment is one step in this direction, but we have to go further. We
have to stop the personal intake of toxins in our food. We must eat fresh, pure, unadulterated products, and campaign to persuade our manufacturers,
suppliers and politicians to ensure that regulations prevent our food and drink from being contaminated. There are far too many chemicals, hormones and
antibiotics and elements of irradiation creeping into the food chain. Now that we are aware of this, we must stop it.

So that’s the first step. The second step deals with the emotions, but also incorporates our mind and spirit. The very thought of some diseases scares us
to death. We are afraid of death, as well, which doesn’t help. A negative diagnosis can send us into the depths of panic, despair and depression, which
saps the vitality of our already depleted body energy. If we have some spiritual knowledge, provided by our own philosophy, culture and religion, we can combat these fears, and regain an optimistic view of life. We then have a fighting chance to cure our disease, if we avoid the life-style that invites in all these toxins. Sometimes the medication we take to ease pain and alleviate some mental illnesses actually brings on further problems of dependency and deepen the depressions which plague modern living. Often an alternate lifestyle can reverse this, and our attitude and sense of values changes. Then ultimately we are not afraid of death, when it comes, since we know that
only the body dies. Once we have this second optimistic fighting spirit under our belt, emotional stability, we can look at the third line of attack on disease, which is mental. We can incorporate some form of visualization to attack the disease, or embrace it until it is no longer a cause for alarm. We are familiar with the work of the Simontons and many other therapists in this area. Prayer, distant healing and other types of mystical understanding and science of mind all come under this heading, but they originate in the fourth and most important and powerful line of attack on disease, which is the spiritual level. Here we reach the root causes of all disharmony, malfunction and disease, and I am sorry if this may cause disagreement with some Spiritualists, but some form of reincarnational or past life influence may be involved here. I will go into this in more detail in further articles, where I will discuss some mediums whom I have met, and others I have studied, who can clairvoyantly look into clients’ ancestral and reincarnational inheritance and show how present situations, problems and even mental and physical diseases are inherited, in some cases, from the past.

This is where we come up against huge blocks to finding a total cure for disease, where we find opposition not only from skeptical scientists but also
from many religious-minded and spiritually-minded people. Disease is not only sometimes inherited from genetic deficiencies, leaving us prone to certain
forms of cancer or other deformities, but it can also reach over from one life to another, forming emotional and sometimes even physical scars from times past.

Those of us with second sight in some form can see or sense these imbalances and influences in the energy bodies or at different levels of the aura. Our mistreatment of animals used in experimental procedures in the search for cures here form a karmic block against our finding causes and cures for disease. Cruelty incurs a spiritual debt which prevents healing, and affects every level of our being. So here, in a nutshell, are the four ways to
combat disease. They need looking into in far more detail than can be dealt with in this short article, but perhaps we can examine them all further in the
future as we continue to look at the work of our best healers, past and present. So here is a look at another healer from the Catholic faith.

St. Joseph is the patron saint of Canada, and Alfred Bessette, (1845 – 1937), later to be known as Brother André, (now Saint André), dedicated his life to him, and to healing. A simple country boy, he came to act as porter for the College of Notre Dame in Montreal. There he developed his healing abilities, effecting many cures with simple massage or the application of olive oil. Soon news of his miracle cures spread, and people started coming to the college, and then to Mount Royal where he established a shrine to St. Joseph and eventually the great Oratory which has become as well-known as Lourdes as a centre of healing. Brother André lived very simply on a diet of dumplings made of flour and water. He had a poor digestion and all his life was never in good health. In this he reminds us of another healer, Jean Baptiste Vianey, the Curate of Ars, who lived on a diet of cold boiled potatoes.

Although uneducated and practically illiterate, like Vianey, Brother André was allowed to take his vows as a novitiate, and as he worked as porter, he was noticed to be quite devoted to Saint Joseph. It was then that cures started to take place. One of the brothers suffered from a running wound on
his leg. At Brother Andre’s suggestion he made a novena in honor of Saint Joseph, and on the morning of St. Joseph’s Day, (19 March), he was cured. Then a student at Notre Dame College took sick with a malignant fever. Brother Andre saw him and told him:
“You have no more fever. You can go out and play.”
Which the child did. The fever had gone.

[To be continued]. Reviewed from the book “The
Miracle of the Mountain: the story of Brother André
and the shrine on Mount Royal,” by Alden Hatch. New
York, Hawthorn Books, 1959.